Elderly Exeter area couple, Grant and Ada Triebner, died outside their farmhouse

An elderly couple who died together in the brutal cold outside their farmhouse are remembered by neighbours as an inseparable pair who loved living in their rural Huron County home.

Grant Triebner, 90, and his wife Ada Triebner, 83, were found by police on their property, about five kilometres northwest of Exeter on Wednesday morning, after a wind-whipped, frigid night when temperatures plunged to nearly –10 C.

“They were very close. They loved being in their home,” Jim Rowe, who’s lived across the road from the Triebners for 64 years, said Thursday.

The sudden deaths were a horrifying shock in Bluewater, the rural municipality where they lived, Rowe said.

Grant suffered a heart attack while outside, and his wife died from the cold while trying to check on him, their obituary said.

Their deaths came amid the unseasonable deep freeze that’s gripped Southwestern Ontario in the last week, in stark contrast to the same period last year when Ontario was emerging from its warmest December on record.

Grant Triebner (90) and Ada Triebner (83) were found dead at their home in Blue Water, Ont. on Wednesday. (Derek Ruttan/The London Free Press)

Huron OPP officers found the couple after they were called to the yellow-brick farmhouse, at 71387 Airport Line, about 9 a.m. Wednesday to check on their well-being.

Police found Triebner just inside an open barn. His wife was found outside in the snow.

No foul play is suspected, the deaths aren’t considered suspicious and police aren’t looking for witnesses, Huron OPP Const. James Stanley said.

Before he retired, Triebner had been a cash crop farmer and also drove a school bus, Rowe said.

His wife was a schoolteacher.

The couple lost their son to cystic fibrosis in 1987, and had two daughters and several grandchildren.

When Triebner retired from farming nearly two decades ago, he rented out his fields, but remained in the farmhouse with his wife.

“They were great people,” said Rowe.

Even at 90, Triebner was very active, Rowe said. Triebner was outdoors regularly, clearing the driveway with his snowblower in the winter, or riding his bicycle down the rural road in the summer.

In their later years, the pair remained very faithful and active in their Exeter church, Rowe said. They volunteered their time and donated to community causes, too.

Triebner was a musical man who could play several instruments.

He was also a skilled handyman, Rowe said.

“Grant was always building something,” he said. “He was (always) fiddling with something, he was a master at building things, or working on a motor or making something work or getting an old tractor to run.”

Above all, Rowe said, Triebner was a loving father and devoted husband to his wife, who suffered from dementia.

Rowe recalled several times when she didn’t recognize her longtime neighbours. She had to be prompted by her husband, but would forget a short time later, Rowe said.

The couple met a tragic end, but like every challenge life threw at them, they met it together, Rowe said.

“They never did much apart from each other,” said Rowe. “They were so close, together all their lives.”